Product Description

Olympus Digital Notetaker USB Records SP/LP/HQ/SHQ 1Gb 480 Tracks Max.138Hrs 54g Ref WS320m

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #43954 in Consumer Electronics
• Brand: Olympus
• Model: WS-320M
• Released on: 2005-10-19
• Dimensions: 8.66" h x 19.68" w x 51.57" l, .10 pounds

Features

• Olympus Digital Notetaker USB Records SP/LP/HQ/SHQ 1Gb 480 Tracks Max.138Hrs 54g Ref WS320m

Manufacturer's Description
An office in your pocket! Ideal for the business traveler who wants to travel light. The stylish piano black WS-320M saves all file types to its memory in an instant, whether they are your voice files, music, presentations or text documents. With its 1GB internal memory it allows you to store up to 480 music tracks and has over 277 hours of recording time.

Box Contents

Customer Reviews

Olympus WS 320M
I needed a high quality voice recorder for interview work but was also looking for a small-ish MP3 player for a train journey (I don't do a lot of travelling). The WS320M is perfect. Excellent recording via the built-in mikes and even better with a Sony mike I used with my old Walkman Professional. Dictation mode gives astonishing results.

MP3 player is SO easy to use and plugs straight into a PC via USB - you use it like an external hard drive so there's no faffing about with specialist software, Windows Media Player is ideal. Just drag and drop. Plays WMA and MP3 and good quality audio too. AND you can use it to carry Word documents etc too as it's basically a mini hard drive.

Even with 10 CDs loaded onto the MP3 player, there's still room for 17 hrs of high quality stereo recording.

Finally, it looks great, weighs the same as an iPod Nano and is the same size so you can use the Apple accessories! 1 x AAA battery lasts a long, long time.

No, I'm not an Olympus salesman - it's just nice to find a really useful piece of kit which performs well.

worth a look!!!
The new WS-320M appealed to me because of its 1GB of flash memory, small size, WMA codec, and built-in USB connector.

This DVR is much smaller than other DVRs. It is almost half the volume and weight of the DS-2200 (similar to the DM-20). The WS-320M is constructed mostly of plastic, but it is well made and assembled with screws. There is a mechanical hold switch. The USB port cover / battery holder slides off smoothly after pressing the release button. No significant force is required to slide off the port cover or to reassemble it. There is a groove you need to line up first to reassemble the port cover. The small AAA battery cover is not attached to the DVR and can get lost. There is a hand strap hole, but no hand strap is included. The buttons, switches, and d-pad are well-made and provide a small amount of tactile feedback. The smaller size of the DVR makes it very portable but it can cause problems operating the switches for those with larger hands. Anyone used to small music players should have no problem operating the WS-320M. However, someone who regularly uses a voice recorder for dictation should probably stick to the larger professional DVRs like the Olympus DS-2200 and Sony ICD-BM1.

I started testing the WS-320M without reading the manual. It was easy to use. Button and menu operation is very logical. The LCD screen is smaller and less bright than the DS-2200 / DS-2, presumably to save battery life. The screens displays a large amount of information including folder name, time elapsed, time remaining, battery, record mode, and more, though not necessarily at the same time. A press of the OK or STOP button will change the information displayed. While recording, the screen displays a horizontal bar sound level meter.

The WS-320M uses only the Windows Media audio format codec. Other Olympus DVRs use the proprietary DSS format. I prefer the WMA format over the DSS format because the audio sounds more life-like. DSS format in SP or LP mode sounds harsh and full of compression artifacts. Recording in STHQ mode on the WS-320M with the built-in microphone produces satisfactory recordings but even better sounding recordings can be made using a high quality external microphone like the Sony ECM-DS70P or the Olympus ME51S. Overall, I liked the recordings on the WS-320M more than the recordings from my DS-2200. The DS-2200 tends to clip high volume sounds. Using a stereo dubbing / attenuator cable, I "ripped" some songs from a CD player to the WS-320M in STHQ mode. The "ripped" music sounded like FM radio quality or better. All of the voice recordings are file date-time stamped appropriately and date-time stamped internally. You can see the internal date with the program DSS Player (not included).

When I plugged the WS-320M into PC, Windows XP recognized it and installed it. There appears to be no driver available for Windows 98. A new drive appeared in the My Computer window. I was able download the recordings to the PC at about 50 MB per minute. I then uploaded some WMA format audiobook tracks to the WS-320M voice folders. The transfer rate uploading is about 26 MB per minute. This is faster than USB 1 and is comparable to many small mp3 music players. I was able to play the audiobook tracks in voice mode.

In general, the voice mode operation of the WS-320M is very similar to the operation of the DS-2200 or DS-2.

As a music player, the WS-320M is comparable to a Creative Muvo Nano / N200. The sound quality is good with a strong low end and a very low level of background hiss (only noticeable with sensitive earbuds). The volume levels range from bedtime quiet to painful. Music is transferred to the WS-320M by copying music files to the music folder or to the root. The WS-320M can handle two levels of folders (artist and albums for example). Navigation on the player is by folder and not by tags. The player uses mp3 tag information only for the screen display. This player can only play bitrates from 5 kbps to 256 kbps. It will not play 320k mp3 files.

This player has most of the functions of dedicated mp3 flash memory players. There are settings for RANDOM, REPEAT, REPEAT ONE, Play One Folder, Play All Folders, ROCK, FLAT, JAZZ, POP, User 5 band EQ, SRS WOW (surround sound / trubass). You can change the order of music tracks and delete music tracks. There is no bookmarking function and no sleep timer.

More information can be gleaned from the WS-320M user manual available for download from the Olympus website.

The WS-320M is a good player / recorder for a student. You can fit a week's worth of lectures on the recorder and still have about 500 mb left over to fill with music. I would not recommend it for a business person needing a true dictation recorder because of its small size and small controls. But for someone who wants to record meetings and seminars and listen to music, it is a good choice.

Pros:

Small size, good price benefit ratio, long battery life for a voice recorder, good construction, built-in USB connector, informative display, good quality voice recordings, WMA codec, dictation capabilities, external microphone input, date-time stamped recordings, plug and play for file/music transfers, and MP3/WMA music player with DRM support.

Cons:

Tiny controls, separate battery door (risk of loss), lesser quality built-in stereo microphone (typical of consumer level recorders), no remote control capability, no included dictation software (DSS Player Lite is available for free download), no included carry case or strap.

Digital Voice Recorder and Music Player - yes!
This is an extremely light unit which could compete with the audio i-Pod since its massive 1GB memory can hold hours of good quality music. Playback through a pair of quality phones was very pleasing. It could do with a bit more output amplification though.
It can record an unimaginably long lecture or meeting in dictaphone mode. Physically its USB connection makes communications with a PC an absolute doddle.
I found that its microphone socket did not appear to accept a signal from an external stereo microphone unless that input was mono'ed.
Input sensitivity for both internal and external mic is automatic, so there was no way of boosting the internal mic or attenuating the external one.
Also its internal clock gained one hour per day which meant that I had to re-adjust the time each time I wanted to use the recorder.
No guarantee or warranty form was provided, so unless the defective product was returned to Amazon within the first 30 days, subsequent contact with the Olympus people became rather convoluted.

Amazon supported the product well and replaced the first one supplied and when the second one proved to have the same problems, offered me a complete refund.
Since I could not find another (non-Olympus) replacement, I decided to refuse the refund and accept the drawbacks as minor irritations.